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Fred McGraw Donner (born 1945) is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago. He has published several books about early Islamic history.

Biography

Early life and studies

Donner was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where he attended public schools. In 1968 he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in Oriental Studies at Princeton University, having interrupted his studies from 1966 to 1967 to pursue the study of Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) in the village of Shimlan, Lebanon. From 1968 to 1970 he served with the U. S. Army, seeing duty with U. S. Army Security Agency in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1969-1970. He then studied oriental philology for a year (1970–1971) at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany, before returning to Princeton for doctoral work. Donner received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton in 1975.

Career

Donner taught Middle Eastern history in the History Department at Yale University from 1975-1982 before taking his position at the University of Chicago in 1982 (The Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations). He served as chairman of his Department (1997–2002) and as Director of the University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (2009–present).

In 2007, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to examine Arabic papyri from the first Islamic century (seventh century CE) at collections in Paris, Vienna, Oxford, and Heidelberg.

Positions held

Donner was President of Middle East Medievalists (MEM; homepage here) from 1992 until 1994 and served as editor of the journal Al-Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists from 1992 until 2011.

Donner was President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA). He has been a member of MESA since 1975, served an earlier term on MESA's Board of Directors (1992-1994) and was awarded MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2008.

A part of the MEM and MESA, Donner has also been a long-term member of The American Oriental Society.

Research

Donner's book The Early Islamic Conquests was published in 1981 by Princeton University Press. He has also published a translation of a volume of the history of al-Tabari in 1993.

In Narratives of Islamic Origins (1998), Donner argues for an early date for the Quranic text. He responds in particular to the theory of late canonisation of the Qur'an proposed by John Wansbrough and Yehuda D. Nevo. The book attempts to explain how concerns for legitimation in the developing Islamic community shaped the themes that are the focus of Islamic historical writing, particularly the themes of prophecy, community, hegemony, and leadership.

Donner's book Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam, an account of the early years of the spiritual movement that would come to be known as Islam, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2010. Donner's main argument is that what came to be called Islam began as a monotheistic "Believers' movement" inaugurated by Muhammad, which included righteous Christians and Jews as well as those monotheists who followed the teachings of the Qur'an. Only under the rule of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685-705) did Islam begin to separate from Christians and Jews. This argument was first presented at the Late Antiquity and Early Islam workshop in London in 1993, and published in an article.

Reception

Donner's book The Early Islamic Conquests (1981) has been described as "magisterial" and "a major contribution to the understanding of early Islamic history" (International Journal of Middle East Studies). It is used as a set text for several university courses.

Donner's Muhammad and the Believers has been described as "learned and brilliantly original" in a New York Times review.

On the other hand, orientalist Patricia Crone was critical of the book: she wrote on Tablet that the only direct evidence for Donner's central thesis of an ecumenical early Islam comes from several Quranic verses, while the rest is based on conjecture. According to Crone, The New York Times review of Donner's book indicates that his account of a "nice, tolerant, and open" Islam appeals to American liberals, and it may perform a useful role in educating the broader public, but as a scholarly work "it leaves something to be desired". Other academic reviews have characterized the book as "provocative and largely convincing" and as "a plausible and compelling, if necessarily somewhat speculative, alternate account of the emergence of Islam".

Awards

Donner received a 1994 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. From 2007 to 2008, Donner held a Guggenheim Fellowship. Donner was appointed a life member of the Scientific Committee of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts in 2012.

Bibliography

• The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press; 1981) ISBN 0-691-05327-8
• History of the Prophets and Kings (Vol. 10): The Conquest of Arabia (State University of New York Press; 1993) ISBN 0-7914-1072-2 (translation)
• Narratives of Islamic Origins (Darwin Press; 1998) ISBN 0-87850-127-4
• Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press; 2010) ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6
• Antoine Borrut; Fred Donner; Touraj Daryaee; Muriel Debié; Sidney H. Griffith; Wadād Qāḍī; Milka Levy-Rubin; Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych; Donald S. Whitcomb; Luke B. Yarbrough. Christians and Others in the Umayyad State (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa, 2016) ISBN 978-1614910312
• Fred M. Donner, ed. (15 May 2017). The Articulation of Early Islamic State Structures. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-89449-4.

References

1. ^ NELC Department Faculty list at University of Chicago
2. ^ "Faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships". University of Chicago. December 27, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
3. "University of Chicago article on Guggenheim Fellowship awards". Chronicle.uchicago.edu. 2007-04-12. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
4. Middle East Medievalists. "Al-Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists". Middleeastmedievalists.org. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
5. "Letters from MESA Presidents". Middle East Studies Association. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
6. "Jere L. Bacharach Service Award". Middle East Studies Association. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
7. ^ Elton H in Bryn Mawr Medieval Review (accessed 2 October 2007)
8. Narratives of Islamic Origins p. 62
9. Crone, Patricia (August 10, 2010). "Among the Believers: A new look at the origins of Islam describes a tolerant world that may not have existed". Tablet Magazine.
10. Antoine Borrut; Fred Donner (15 May 2005). "From Believers to Muslims : Confessional Self-Identity in the Early Islamic Community". Abstracta Iranica. 26. doi:10.4000/abstractairanica.2410.
11. Review of The Early Islamic Conquests in the International Journal of Middle East Studies
12. e.g. refer University of Oklahoma (accessed 2 October 2007)
13. New York Times, The Muslim Past, Sunday Book Review by Max Rodenbeck 25 June 2010
14. Patricia Crone: Among the Believers Tablet Magazine 10. August 2010
15. Steven C. Judd (Sep 2011). "Review of Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam by Fred M. Donner". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 79 (3): 762–765. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfr024. JSTOR 23020418.
16. Paul R. Powers (February 2013). "Review of Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam by Fred M. Donner". History of Religions. 52 (3): 306–308. JSTOR 10.1086/66866.

External links

• Entry with the University of Chicago

• 1945 births
• 20th-century American essayists
• 20th-century American historians
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American essayists
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• American male essayists
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• Scholars of medieval Islamic history
• Living people
• Members of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts
• Middle Eastern studies in the United States
• Princeton University alumni
• University of Chicago faculty
• Academic staff of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Writers about religion and science
• Yale University faculty